


Little Thefts

by shaenie



Category: The Dead Zone (television series)
Genre: M/M, Psychic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-27
Updated: 2005-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 03:56:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny's relationship with Walt is complicated, and not getting any easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Thefts

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how this even happened. I know I wrote just over twenty thousand words in about 36 hours, and it didn't go down the way I thought it would (which, incidentally, I envisioned as being short and filthy). Also, it's split, because LJ is trying to stifle my creativity by imposing a word limit.

  
Johnny touches them when they aren't paying attention to him, glimpses of their lives. It's like being a peeping Tom -- everything about this is like that, of course, but this is somehow _worse_ \-- a dirty habit he knows is wrong, but cannot help, cannot stop, cannot be caught at.

It's Sarah and Bruce and J.J. for the most part. Purdy, well… Faith Heritage still supports Stillson, and Johnny can't quite bring himself to touch Purdy. Probably wouldn't, even if Faith Heritage wasn't in Stillson's pocket. Gene isn't exactly a friend, anyway.

Against all odds, Walt _is_ a friend, but it hurts too much to see through Walt's eyes, to see Sarah in almost the same way that Johnny sees her, to see J.J. as Johnny wants to see him, kissing her goodnight, tucking him into bed, so Johnny avoids touching Walt if he can. It's easier to like Walt -- and he _does_ like Walt -- if Johnny doesn't have to witness the light in Walt's life first hand.

He touches people he knows are good, looks for things no one else would probably care about, sees J.J. helping a kid in his class with his science homework (and smiles for hours with a thick lump in his throat), sees Bruce with an elderly woman, patiently going through the physical therapy routine he's developed for her again and again, pressing sheets of paper into her hands because her memory isn't so good anymore, sees the tears of gratitude and embarrassment in her eyes and feels Bruce's love -- Bruce loves everyone, a fact that Johnny would never reveal he knows to Bruce, who'd deny it hotly -- and his determination to help.

Johnny doesn't know what he'd do without Bruce.

He sees Sarah making J.J.'s lunch; she licks the knife when she finishes with J'J.'s ham and mayo sandwich. Johnny thinks, _Oh, gross, Sarah,_ but it fills his chest with a deep warmth, a tidal contentment.

There's no justification for these little thefts.

Johnny knows it, but it doesn't stop him.

Walt calls him at one in the morning on a Tuesday, and Johnny's almost grateful to get the call. He's been dreaming of Armageddon, as he sometimes does, and even going with Walt to a house on Pine Street, where there are two people mired in fear and horror and despair over the disappearance of their daughter, seems better than dreams to Johnny. He's aware of just how awful such thinking is.

He touches Walt, once, less than ten minutes after they arrive; it's an accident -- Walt is handing Johnny a scrap of fabric, white with tiny purple flowers, a piece of Emily's nightgown and Johnny's fingertips brush against Walt's knuckles. "You're going to find her," Johnny gasps out, shaking his head slightly to clear the rain that isn't there from his eyes, and Walt's hand spasms with surprise under Johnny's fingertips, but doesn't pull away. There is cautious hope in Walt's eyes (Walt's eyes are always cautious when he looks at Johnny, but this time that has nothing to do with him), and Johnny isn't entirely surprised when Walt's hand turns over, palm up, and his fingers curl around Johnny's wrist. Johnny's hand twitches and he instinctively tries to pull back, but Walt's grip is strong and warm, calluses scritching against the thin skin of the underside of Johnny's wrist.

"Where?" Walt demands, and Johnny's gaze jerks upward from the incongruous sight of Walt's tanned hand on Johnny's white skin, and meet's Walt's dark eyes, and then there is the familiar blur and shift, and _white light is reflecting off sheets of pouring rain, he is wet and cold, but there is a small bundle of warmth in his arms that smells of clean laundry, and two small arms around his neck, and she is shivering but alive, thank God, thank God, and the light is coming from his car, his headlights, and he looks around quickly, sees trees and a blue frame house with white trim, a mailbox, a white Buick, a road sign… yes. **There**._

"Belmont," Johnny gasps, "A blue frame house with white trim, white Buick, she has her doll, you're holding her in the rain," and Johnny is shaking and Walt's hand falls away, leaving his wrist feeling cool and blank, like canvas.

"Okay, okay," Walt says, already turning away from Johnny, but one hand comes up and grips Johnny's shoulder briefly en route to the mic of Walt's radio as he calls for backup. Shuddering at the cold, Johnny sinks into one of the dining room chairs and rubs his face with both hands. Walt relays information to his backup quickly and precisely, and then he's saying, "Come on, John, let's go."

Johnny gets up automatically, and sees the scrap of nightgown on the floor at his feet. He bends to pick it up, and there is a moment of disorientation, vertigo so familiar it's almost comfortable, and without Walt's touch, _Emily is in a small bedroom decorated for a little girl, she's curled up in a twin bed with a pink canopy, and Johnny can see five little toes poking out from under one edge of the duvet, there's a stuffed animal of some sort curled under her chin -- he can't tell what sort, exactly, there's not enough light -- and she's sleeping peacefully, and there is a man in the doorway, watching her sleep, his face sad and gaunt and heavily lined, and even in the dim light Johnny can tell he's ill, and the man says, "Emmie," but the girl doesn't stir, and, "Daddy loves you."_

"It's Emily's father," Johnny says, and there is a shattering crash from the direction of the kitchen. Emily's mother has dropped a tray of full coffee cups.

" _I'm_ Emily's father," Mark MacMillan says, but Johnny can see that the man isn't surprised.

Walt looks from Mark MacMillan to Janie MacMillan, then to Johnny. "Is she in danger?" he asks -- trust Walt to ask the only important thing to ask -- and Johnny shakes his head. He's certain. "Right," Walt says, and turns toward the MacMillan's. "Tell me about Emily's father."

And Johnny's chest is warm and full with the knowledge of Walt's trust.

They get to Johnny's before dawn, and Walt insists on coming inside. He doesn't speak, just brews coffee in Johnny's coffee pot without asking. He goes through the cupboard methodically to find what he needs, and Johnny wonders if it's police training or common sense that makes it so easy for Walt to find his way around Johnny's kitchen, from filters to mugs to sugar. It all takes under ten minutes and Walt only ends up opening one cabinet he doesn't need.

Walt spoons sugar into a mug and pushes it across the counter to Johnny. It's just the way Johnny likes his coffee, dark with plenty of sugar. Candy coffee, Sarah calls it. There's something on Walt's mind -- Johnny doesn't have to be a psychic to know that -- but Johnny's not sure he wants to know. And Walt will get to it in his own time. Johnny's not in a big hurry to get to bed -- he doesn't think he'll sleep anyhow -- so he doesn't press.

Walt settles on the other side of the butcher block, his elbows resting on the surface, his mug between his hands. Walt takes his coffee unsweetened, with milk, or in this case, with half and half.

When Walt speaks, Johnny's so surprised by what comes out that he feels his mouth drop open.

"How often does it happen like that?" Walt asks, his eyes flickering up to meet Johnny's briefly, then down to his coffee again. "It's happened before." It's not a question

Johnny flails mentally for several seconds. It has, of course; it happens all the time. It just doesn't happen with _Walt_ , because Johnny doesn't touch Walt. Not if he can help it. And he feels just a little bit stupid about that, at least in this context, because… well it only makes sense. To try and see a possible future in which Walt and the victim _intersect_ is just good time-management.

Johnny shifts uncomfortably. He can't honestly say he isn't conscious of avoiding it, either. He is hyper-aware of the spaces between himself and Walt Bannerman any time they're the same general vicinity. "Sometimes," he hedges uneasily. "I don't like to…"

"Yeah," Walt says, nodding, looking pensive but not condemning. "I know you don't."

Johnny flinches a little, but Walt doesn't seem to notice, his attention on his coffee. "I'm not pushing you to experiment," he says, but Johnny can see that Walt is, a little, and he knows it. "I'm just saying it might help, next time. If you can touch me and something from the victim, if it can show you our eventual connection…" He doesn't finish, but he doesn't need to.

Johnny knows exactly what Walt's saying. That one little slip tonight, touching both the scrap of nightgown and Walt's hand at the same time, had saved them hours of searching, maybe. He has no way of knowing if he'd have found something else that would have given him such a clear view of the outside of the house Emily was in, but it seems unlikely that he'd have found anything that would do it so quickly. For a vision, it had been remarkably straightforward.

Johnny can't help but think some of that has to do with Walt's influence. Walt is a remarkably straightforward kind of guy.

"Yeah," Johnny agrees finally. "We'll… we can try that. Maybe next time. Not tonight, though," and it sounds a little bit like a plea. Walt glances up at him sharply, his eyes dark and inquisitive, but he doesn't ask. Johnny likes that about Walt; unless he feels he has to, Walt doesn't ask.

Walt nods and takes a gulp of coffee that Johnny is sure must burn his tongue. "Why don't you come over for dinner tonight," Walt says casually enough that Johnny would think it really _was_ casual, except he can see the way Walt's hand tightens around his mug, how his knuckles whiten.

"I don't know," he says carefully, uncertain. Walt is his friend, but Walt's wife is still in love with Johnny, and Walt's son is Johnny's son, and their friendship has peculiar limits that Johnny isn't in any hurry to test. "I think Bruce might…"

"Call Bruce and cancel," Walt says sharply, looking up at Johnny with narrowed eyes for a moment. Johnny says nothing, his mouth still slightly open, and Walt sighs. "I just think you need some…" He stops and looks at Johnny for long moments, as though trying to decide how much to say. "You touch things, people, at our house, John. Don't think I haven't noticed. It's not good for you to be alone so much."

Something thick swells in Johnny's throat, and he looks down at his coffee mug. He doesn't know why he's surprised. Walt's a cop; he's supposed to notice things.

He wonders if Walt has noticed that Johnny doesn't touch _him_. There's some kind of tenebrous guilt at the idea that Johnny can't quite decipher. "Okay," he agrees helplessly.

Johnny sleeps for about three hours -- it's actually better than he thought he'd do -- and then spends a couple of hours downstairs. He knows from experience, though, what too much time with the whiteboard of doom does to him, so he deliberately leaves it alone after a couple of hours. He has a sandwich and a handful of fig Newton's for lunch, and does his physical therapy outside in the back yard, where his mother's garden is blooming. He showers and shaves and reads part of some science fiction novel J.J. had left over at his place, which turns out to be quite good.

Around quarter after four, he finds himself standing in his bedroom in his shorts, examining the contents of his closet critically. "When did I get so old?" he asks aloud, and then smiles a little at the question. He's got a high school science teacher's wardrobe, even now, and there's not a lot of room for excitement in that. There are a couple of suits, but he knows better than that. Walt is strictly casual in his own home, and Johnny had only needed to show up hopelessly overdressed once to figure that out.

In the end he puts on a pair of pressed jeans -- okay, so he irons his jeans, it's a thing -- and a blue button-up.

He spends longer in the wine cellar, but he doesn't know what they're having for dinner, so ends up with an all-purpose white, good but not spectacular.

He drives to Sarah and Walt's, unable to completely squash the nervous flutter in his belly. He wonders if Walt mentioned what had happened with the vision to Sarah, wonders if he's mentioned the conversation over coffee.

He wonders if Sarah, never stupid, has parsed that information out into an explanation for the random accidental touches, the back of her hand, her elbow, nothing risqué, nothing inappropriate. He decides he's being paranoid, then decides he's not, and eventually decides he's just going to have to wait and see.

Even if she has, Sarah loves him. Johnny doesn't doubt it and never has, not even for a moment. It's in her eyes when she looks at him, it's in the way she talks to him, and sometimes in her silence. Even if she does know about the little thefts, the worst he can expect from her are questions. Sarah always wants to understand everything.

She answers the door beaming, and though her hug is shorter than those he remembers from when she was his, it's no less warm. Johnny lets his cheek brush her hair, and _she's in the shower, singing at the top of her voice, sudsy hair dipped back into the spray, smiling at the onset of the day._ He pulls back and smiles down at her, and she grips his forearm through his coat, thankfully not enough to set off another vision. "I'm so glad to see you!" she says. "Come in, come in! Ooh, you brought wine!"

Johnny surrenders the bottle to her inspection, and follows her into the kitchen. Walt is behind the island, tearing lettuce into bits for a salad, and J.J. is setting the table, and Johnny's heart contracts in one ugly, horrible moment of envy. He hates that he can't stop that from happening, but when it's past there is nothing but the warm feeling of being included, Sarah pressing silverware into his hands, Walt offering him a beer, J.J. babbling excitedly about his last game.

It's Sarah's famous pot roast, as good or better than Johnny remembers, and a red would've probably been better, but Walt has three glasses of the white to Johnny's two and Sarah's one (and, to J.J.'s disappointment, his glass of green Kool-aid), and Johnny's content to have simply brought something they liked, to have contributed. They let J.J. sit at the table and do his homework while they talk, and when he has questions on Algebra, Walt directs him laughingly to Johnny, citing a lack of both talent and interest, which ends up with J.J. dragging his chair close to Johnny's while Sarah and Walt clean up.

J.J.'s smart, and Johnny walks him through the first two problems step by step, and J.J. runs with it. Johnny watches his son's pencil scratching over the paper for a few minutes, and then gets up to help with the clean up, brushing his fingertips idly over J.J.'s shoulder as he does, and _Shannon O'Hanlon in the cafeteria, two tables down from where J.J.'s eating his cafeteria cheeseburger, smiles at J.J., and she's two inches taller than he is with freckles and bright red hair like burnished copper, and J.J. swallows hard, but doesn't hesitate when she motions him over to sit with her, a wide and goofy smile on his face._

Johnny turns away, hiding his grin, and catches Walt watching him, a brow arched. The guilt is fleeting, because though Walt isn't smiling, he isn't frowning either, and there is something on his face, something that might be recognition.

They sit out back after J.J. goes to bed, drinking more wine -- theirs, this time, as Johnny had only brought the one bottle, and it might not be as good but it's plentiful and good enough -- and just talking, and they haven't done this much, not the three of them, and they're all three a little drunk by the time Sarah throws up her hands and announces her intention to go to bed.

Johnny glances at his watch, and is shocked to see it's nearly midnight. He stands, and says, "Yeah, I should go, too, I didn't mean to stay so late," and Sarah laughs.

"You've had half a bottle of wine in the last hour, Johnny," she points out, her cheeks pink with wine and her eyes bright with amusement. "You aren't going anywhere for a couple of hours." She glances at Walt, a silent question, and adds, "You can just crash out in our guest room if you want."

"I- I," Johnny stammers, because he suddenly doesn't want to be alone with Walt, not with both of them slightly drunk and no Sarah to buffer them; he's not afraid of Walt, that's not it at all. But wine is notorious for loosening the tongue, and he doesn't want to talk about… things, not with Walt.

"Sit down," Walt says, and he's smiling but there's a glimmer of something serious in his eyes. "Sarah, you want to start us a pot of coffee before you go up, babe?"

"Sure," she says, her smile softening as she bends to kiss Walt's temple. She hesitates as she passes Johnny, and then she's brushing her lips against _his_ temple as well, and Johnny has to close his eyes _the sheets are cool and crisp, and in the black silence of the bedroom she can hear them, both of them, low rumbling voices, indistinct from the back yard, and she shifts restlessly and sighs, and then pushes the sheet down, cocks her knees, and closes her eyes as her hand slips down the skin of her belly, pushing aside the flimsy fabric of her panties, and the soft sound she makes is vibrant on the air…_ and bite the inside of his lip to remain still and silent.

He listens to her retreat, hears her in the kitchen moving around, and when he opens his eyes again, Walt is turning a half-full bottle of wine around and around in his callused hands, his face tipped down and wreathed in shadows. "We could just stop drinking now," he says, and turns the bottle, glances sideways at Johnny. "And you'd be all right to drive in an hour or so. Or we could kill this bottle." He tips it slightly, and his dark brows arch slightly in challenge.

It's almost funny, such a _guy_ thing to do, because Walt clearly wants to talk about something, but he won't just _say_ it. Neither, of course, will Johnny, and he can't reasonably escape the conversation completely, so he accepts the challenge and tips his glass toward Walt for a second, before draining the remainder and holding it out for Walt to refill.

Walt refills both glasses, and for a while -- for as long as they hear Sarah in the kitchen, in fact -- neither of them say anything.

Sometimes Johnny thinks that Walt may be better for Sarah than Johnny ever could have been. He doesn't know if he could have done what Walt has done, doesn't know if he could have accepted Walt into his and Sarah's lives, had their positions been reversed, and he admires Walt more than a little for his ability to accept. He wants to reassure him, has wanted to for a long time now, but he knows better than to try. He sees Walt's fear, and without the help of his cross-wired brain. He sees it because he looks, and because he has his own pain that's not so dissimilar. He can't tell Walt that Johnny's no danger to him, to his family, that Johnny doesn't want to take anything or anyone from him, because Walt wouldn't believe that anyway.

Walt believes what he sees with his own eyes, he believes what he can prove through investigation, and maybe it hasn't been long enough for him to believe in Johnny that way. Maybe no matter how long it is, it will never be long enough. And maybe Johnny has already ruined his chance at earning Walt's trust when he took what Sarah was offering, and it hardly matters that it was only the once. What matters is that Johnny had salved his own heart that afternoon, and Sarah's, and he hadn't given a thought to Walt's.

And yes, Johnny knows him better now, likes him more, respects him completely, but that doesn't matter.

You can't go back to right the wrongs. It's one of the most painful things about being "gifted." No matter what he can do, he can't go back.

Both their glasses are nearly empty again when Walt turns in his deck chair, so that he's facing Johnny, small plastic patio table the only thing separating them. It seems like far too little separation to Johnny; his hand tightens on his glass, but he doesn't turn away.

He owes Walt, not just for the wrongs that Johnny has committed against him, but for the trust that Walt grants him in other ways, for Walt's patience and his willingness to let Johnny into J.J.'s life, for saying nothing when Sarah had brushed her lips against _Johnny's_ temple, silent but not unconsidered, an admission before both of them that she holds them equal in her heart, for saving Johnny's life, and a hundred other things.

"If I could do what you do," Walt says, and his eyes shift for a moment, unsteadily surveying the sky, before sliding back to Johnny. He is not drunk, but he's not sober; Johnny is exactly the same. Maybe they both need to be, for the sort of conversation that Johnny senses this is going to be. "If I could do what you can do, John, I'd get rid of me."

It doesn't make sense, but it does. Johnny knows exactly what Walt means.

Walt, Johnny realizes, is the only person that habitually calls him 'John.'

Johnny swallows the last of what's in his glass to moisten his suddenly dry mouth, and holds the glass out to Walt, a silent demand. The bottle is equidistant between them on the table, but Johnny doesn't trust his hands not to shake, and besides…

Walt has been the only one pouring tonight. It seems unfair to use that, to pick the bottle up and perhaps get a glimpse into the next few minutes, it seems like cheating to hold the bottle in his hands and use whatever he can see to help him navigate treacherous waters.

Walt picks up the bottle and pours most of what's left into Johnny's glass. The rest, a couple of swallows at most, he tips into his own glass, topping it up.

"No you wouldn't," Johnny finally says, and takes a hefty swallow.

"We'll never know, I guess," Walt says, but Johnny can feel him looking at him still. He resists the urge to look back for all of about thirty seconds, and then he turns his head and arches his brow in question. For all of that, he can't quite bring himself to utter the words on the tip of his tongue, can't say, _"You got something on your mind, Walt?"_ Walt looks back, and Johnny can barely tell he's been drinking. It's the cop looking out at Johnny from Walt's eyes -- Johnny has seen the cop plenty of times, though the cop hasn't been unleashed on _him_ for a couple of years now -- and Johnny sits up straight instinctively, bracing for… something. "You know what I find weird, Johnny?" Walt says conversationally, but his eyes are sharp and steady. "You know what I can't figure out?"

"What's that, Walt?" Johnny returns, the same tone, almost hyper-friendly, and his heart is pounding in his chest. Had he thought he wasn't afraid of Walt? Had he really? Because tell the truth and shame the devil, John Smith (his mother would say), if Walt looks at him with his cop's eyes and tells him to walk out the front door and never come back, Johnny will do it. He'll do it. He owes Walt, and he _likes_ Walt, and more importantly, he believes with all his heart that Walt will take care of them, maybe better than Johnny could do himself. That Walt loves them, will put them above everything else, will go to any lengths and devote all his considerable powers and skills to making sure J.J. and Sarah survive anything, everything, including Johnny himself.

"I can't figure out why you don't come here more than you do," Walt says softly. Johnny stares at him, bushwhacked, and Walt drains his wine glass in several swallows, tipping his head all the way back to do it so that the moon glitters on the base of the glass and paints the skin of his throat pale. Johnny takes a swallow himself, and says nothing. "It's me, isn't it," Walt says, and when Johnny looks back Walt is staring at the ground, empty glass in his hands, brow ridged into a frown. "It's me that keeps you away."

"No, Walt," Johnny says, and he means it, he does, even though he knows it's not quite true. Walt looks up without tipping his head up, and Johnny can only see his eyes, gleaming out from beneath lowered brows. "Not exactly," Johnny allows, and looks away. "Not entirely," he sighs.

"I feel like a thief," Walt says softly. With exaggerated care, he puts his empty glass on the patio table. "I feel like…" but he doesn't finish, just rests his elbows on his knees and clenches his hands into fists.

"It isn't--" Johnny begins, and, "Walt, this whole thing--" and finally just, "You're not a thief," because there aren't good words to explain this situation any more than there is any good way to handle it. "You didn't take them from me," Johnny says, nearly a whisper. "This was never my life." He doesn't mean for it to sound bitter, but he knows it does. "I had a vision once," he says, and tells himself he's drunk, and that makes it okay to lay his heart out like this, but he knows better. "I had a vision where it was my life." He can feel Walt looking at him, but he doesn't look back. "I woke up next to Sarah. I had… a daughter."

Walt makes a sound that is not unlike a growl, a sound Johnny understands on the deepest of primal levels, a sound that is part sympathy and part furious denial.

Still, Johnny can't help but add, "She looked like Sarah. Her name was Miranda."

Walt stands up and stalks away, his shoulders a tight line of fury. Johnny watches him pace down the slope of the back yard, turn a tight circle, and thrust both hands into his hair. Then he turns and walks back, his whole body thrumming with tension, but when he gets close, his face is calm. Tight, but calm.

Johnny stands up as he approaches, and discovers that his head is a little swimmy from the wine. Walt stops a couple of feet away. "This was never my life," Johnny says. " _That_ was my life, maybe, but this is _yours_."

"I notice you don't say you don't want it," Walt grates out with only a little sarcasm, and Johnny's lips twist into a mocking smile before he can stop them.

"Yeah," he agrees a little fiercely. "I don't say that, do I?" He turns away and fumbles at the back door, hands uncoordinated with wine and anger and the empty ache in his chest that he sometimes covers with visions of Armageddon, sometimes fills with helping others, sometimes ignores, and sometimes _drowns_ in.

Just as he gets the latch, Walt's hand appears above his and pushes the door shut firmly. "You can't drive," is all he says when Johnny glares at him, and he doesn't let go until Johnny turns away from the door, clenching his hands and wishing briefly for his cane, if only for something to lean on, something to do with his hands. "Sit down, Johnny," Walt says when Johnny just stands there with hunched shoulders and hands that want to tremble. Walt's voice has been bleached of whatever anger, whatever jealousy or fear that had colored it. He sounds weary and not a little brittle; it's unpleasantly familiar.

Johnny doesn't sit down, but he does curl his hands around the back of the chair he'd been sitting in, and _sees Walt, and it's dark and the patio doors are open, and he can hear Sarah on the phone with Johnny, Sarah sounding brightly excited about something Walt isn't a part of, Sarah laughing the way she does, her head rocked back and her mouth open wide, and he sees Walt put a hand over his eyes, sees Walt's hand around a beer bottle and how it tightens and flexes, and Walt's shoulders are round and defeated,_ Johnny staggers back, pushing the chair away, the vision away, with apologies on his lips, he's sorry for how Walt feels and he's sorry for _spying_ on how Walt feels, he's sorry and he's _tired_ , but Walt's hand is curling around his upper arm, steadying him, and Walt is very close when Johnny turns his head.

Walt frowns into his face, not angry but rather the more familiar look of the cop that works things out, that solves crimes, that notices that Johnny touches people and things _here_ and not elsewhere, and Johnny is sure that Walt knows that Johnny doesn't touch him. He's sure of it. "What did you see?" Walt asks softly, and Johnny just shakes his head, because the only thing worse than invading Walt's privacy like this is the way Walt would look if he _knew_ about it, the angry denial of a man who doesn't care to have his weaknesses displayed to the world, a strong man who is nevertheless wary of being weak. Walt doesn't push it, doesn't demand answers that Johnny clearly doesn't want to give. Instead, he says, "What is it you're looking for, when you're touching my wife and my son?"

Johnny can smell the tang of wine on Walt's breath -- and yeah, without the wine, Walt never would have asked this, though Johnny's sure this is _the_ question, the one Walt had wanted the answer to when Walt had invited Johnny to dinner in the first place -- and he hears himself open his mouth and let out an furious bark of sound that at first seems meaningless, formless, but Walt frowns and cocks his head to one side and says, "Light?" in the manner of a man that's repeating something that he doesn't understand, and obviously he'd heard a lot more clearly that Johnny had. "Light?" he says again, and Johnny shakes Walt's hand off his arm and takes a couple of steps away.

"How many killers have I helped you catch, Walt?" Johnny asks, and his voice is a little hoarse, but sounds otherwise reasonable, at least to his own ears. "How many criminals and freaks, how many truly bad guys?"

Walt circles around until he's facing Johnny, and his eyes are a little wary, but they always are when he looks at Johnny, aren't they? "A bunch," he says with a little shrug, and Johnny almost smiles because that's so Walt, even though Johnny would bet almost anything that Walt knows exactly how many, that Walt could break it down for him in a serious of orderly categories with precise numbers, and maybe footnotes for those lunatics that fit into more than one category.

"It's like, it's like," Johnny says, struggling to formulate his thoughts into words, to make of something that's almost visceral into something articulate enough for Walt to really _get_. "The things you see, Walt," he manages finally, "the bodies and the women and the blood, the things you see doing your job, do they make you feel… dirty?"

Walt frowns, considering the question, which isn't quite right, but is the best that Johnny can do at the moment. It isn't like he planned this little speech. Walt thinks for a few more seconds, and the nods slowly. "I think I know what you mean, and yeah. Not dirty, exactly. Tainted."

"Yes!" Johnny says, gesturing with both hands, seizing upon the word, which is exactly right. "Tainted. _Tainted_. And you see what they do, you see what they leave behind them, but sometimes when I touch the things you give me, sometimes I'm in their _minds_. Not all the time, but sometimes, enough, I'm not just a witness, I'm the _one_ , I'm the bad guy." He paces the length of the patio, paces back to Walt, who is watching him with a kind of speculative pity that makes Johnny want to both laugh and hit him. He's never been a violent man, not when he's in his _own_ mind, his right mind, so to speak, but everything about his dealings with Walt Bannerman is complicated, and it doesn't surprise him.

"I touch Sarah and J.J. and Bruce," Johnny says wearily, God he's so tired. "I touch them because they're all… bright. I see… stupid things, things that don't matter to anyone but me, _good_ things, and sometimes it makes me feel less… tainted." Because they love him, Johnny doesn't say, because they know about him and they still love him, and they give him a reason not to turn away from all the rest.

He turns away from Walt deliberately and when he goes to the back door this time, Walt doesn't stop him from flipping the latch and sliding it open. Inside he finds his jacket and digs in his pocket until his fingers curl around the cool plastic of his phone.

"What are you doing?" Walt asks from just inside the doorway, and Johnny flips open the phone and jabs the little button that brings up the phone book, scrolling through until he finds the number he's looking for.

"Calling a cab," Johnny says, and hits send when the number pops up on the little screen. He holds the phone up to his ear and waits.

"You hate cabs," Walt points out (which is completely right, Johnny _loathes_ cabs, too many people's hands have touched them inside and out, too many people linger inside them), and Johnny turns and gives him a look. Walt holds out both hands, a kind of simultaneously conciliatory and warding gesture, and says, "Yeah, all right."

Johnny waits outside for the cab (aware of Walt just inside the front door, watching him from the window, and doing his almighty best to ignore it), and tugs his sleeves over his hands when he opens the door and keeps them there throughout the drive home.

He's still mostly drunk when he walks in his front door, and he falls into bed fully dressed but for his shoes, and when he wakes again it's been ten hours.

He knows he didn't dream of Armageddon, though he can't remember what he actually had dreamed about. He finds he doesn't care.

It's not the worst hangover he's ever had -- for worst hangovers ever, you had to go pretty damn far to beat coma-hangover, after all -- but it's bad enough to send him stumbling into the bathroom to fumble for ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet. He washes it down with water from the tap, and then goes directly into the shower, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

He feels a little better afterward, and wanders into the kitchen to see what the inside of his fridge looks like, still dressed in a towel and sporting some fairly serious five o'clock shadow which he won't take care of until he can trust himself a little more with a razor.

He's got his head in the refrigerator, shivering a bit but gamely dragging out eggs and green peppers and sausage and milk anyhow, thinking omelet, thinking hot sauce, thinking he doesn't remember the last time he's felt this genuinely hungry, and maybe he should give Walt a call and thank him for the extremely awkward but apparently cathartic experience of the previous at night, when the knock on the door comes.

He assumes it's Bruce. Only Bruce ever shows up unannounced -- well, and Dana, but she hasn't been hanging around lately, not that Johnny can blame her -- and it isn't until his hand closes on the knob that it occurs to him that it could be anyone else, because he _sees Walt, fingertips resting on the wood of the door, head tipped back as though he's looking at the sky, but apparently he isn't because his lips are moving, he's counting, and then he's tipping his head back down and looking right at Johnny, and he says, "Let me in, John,_ and Johnny snatches his hand away from the knob, rubbing it frantically on his towel.

"Okay," Johnny says, sounding breathless and a little shaken to himself, which is fair enough, because that's pretty much exactly how he feels. "That was freaky."

He stands there for a few seconds, waiting for Walt to knock again, or to actually say, "Let me in, John," or _something_ , but it doesn't happen, and he eventually reaches out and twists the doorknob.

The door swings open and Walt steps in, and Johnny takes a couple of hasty steps backward. Walt observes Johnny in his towel for a few moments, and then says, "As long as it took you to answer the door, you could've got dressed at least twice."

"Er," Johnny says, and Walt shrugs.

"I'll wait."

Johnny goes and gets dressed.

He finds Walt in the kitchen, once again brewing coffee. Johnny winces; he hasn't forgotten how all this started, after all. "Did you," Johnny begins, and Walt turns and arches both brows questioningly. "Did you say something?" Johnny asks. "When you were outside? Did you touch the door and say something?"

Walt puts down the coffee filters and turns to face Johnny, looking intently at him. "What did you hear?" he asks, instead of answering the question (Johnny is familiar with this particular cop trick). Johnny just looks at him, and Walt shrugs. "I might've. I figured you had time to get to the door."

"Well, don't," Johnny says after a few incredulous seconds. "It freaked me out."

Walt shrugs and turns his attention back to making coffee. He seems not at all affected by their overindulgence of the night before, all neat and pressed and Sheriff-y in his uniform. Johnny is completely disgusted with him.

Johnny watches Walt make coffee, trying a couple of different versions of 'why are you here' out in his head, but they all sound more than a little hostile, so he abandons the question. Walt will tell him, after all, eventually. With any luck, it won't involve wine.

It's nearly a moment by moment repeat of the last time they'd had coffee, right down to Walt sugaring Johnny's coffee for him and pushing it across the counter, and then settling with his own coffee, cream-no-sugar, across from Johnny. "This is starting to become a habit," Johnny mutters, and picks up his mug and _sees Walt standing beside his bed, looking down at Sarah sleeping, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging open, just watching her sleep with one hand curled up under her cheek, the long line of her bare back licked by moonlight where the sheet has drifted down around her hips, and after a while she rolls over and blinks sleepily up at him, her lips curling, and she says, "Did you have a good time with Johnny?" and he says, "It was something," and discards his shirt and then his jeans and slides naked into bed with her, and she curls around him and he touches her hair, her neck, and she sighs and winds her arms around her neck when he rolls over, pressing her down into the mattress, and his jaw flexes as he kisses her and her head tips back and she moans into his mouth…_

It takes an act of will to uncurl his hand from around the mug, and Johnny sits back, his hands well clear of it, his mouth dry, his pants suddenly far too snug.

Walt is watching him, something knowing flickering in his dark eyes, and Johnny can't make himself meet his gaze. After things settle down in his pants a bit, he gets up and goes around Walt to get a new mug, one Walt hasn't touched, and he uses the oven mitt to handle the carafe, just in case. He knows Walt is watching, and he's resigned to the fact that eventually Walt will ask, even if it's not today, but if there is one thing in the world that Johnny does not have the mental fortitude to deal with right now, it's visions of Walt making love to Sarah. Give him a bloody murder to solve, the bloodier the better, but not that.

He sits back down and regards Walt for a few long, silent moments, and finally decides that he doesn't much care how hostile he sounds after all. "What do you want, Walt?" he asks, and sips at his coffee.

Walt shrugs. "A cup of coffee," he says, but when Johnny glares, he shrugs. "I don't know. It was the third time I ended up on your street this morning, just driving by your place. I figured it must be something, so I stopped."

Johnny stares at him; Walt seems completely unruffled by this admission. He sips at his coffee and glances at the countertop behind him. "Were you making omelets?"

"I was thinking about making _an_ omelet," Johnny says, "as in singular," but Walt is already standing up and rolling up his sleeves. At a loss, Johnny just watches him rummage until he comes up with a big glass mixing bowl and an omelet skillet.

"Where's your whisk?" Walt demands, and Johnny stands up and leans over the butcher block, opening the utensil drawer on the other side. Walt reaches in and procures a whisk, and shuts the drawer. Johnny remains standing for a few seconds, feeling a little surreal, like this whole thing is the precursor to a really weird dream, something really Freudian, most likely. Walt begins breaking eggs into the bowl like a pro.

"This could not get any weirder," Johnny mutters, and Walt laughs.

"Let me tell you about weird," he says, his back to Johnny. He pulls the cutting board off a hook and begins chopping up green pepper, movements economical and competent. "My wife's ex-boyfriend was in a coma for six years. He wakes up with paranormal powers, and did I mention he's the biological father of my son?" Walt turns and looks narrowly over his shoulder at Johnny, as though making sure he's still present and listening.

"Walt," Johnny says, and Walt turns back to the cutting board, waving the knife around in a slightly haphazard fashion that Johnny takes to mean Walt would just as soon Johnny shut up.

"So, this guy, he's a psychic, right? The real deal, I mean. Solves murders, catches criminals, does the right thing. Even worse, he seems like a decent guy. Doesn't try to take up where he left off with my wife, doesn't object to my raising h-- his son, helps me with my job. He's friendly," Walt adds too-brightly, and then more softly, "I like him."

"Walt," Johnny says again, and this time Walt stops chopping and turns around. The look he gives Johnny is enough to render him silent.

"Some time goes by. A long time, a couple of years. Not much changes, except this guy, he gets better at what he can do. I see it every time I call him for help. I watch him learn how to us this, this whatever it is he's got, and I start noticing things. Little things, like how his hand quivers a little right before he touches something he can use, something he can _feel_ , and how he tenses up in crowds, and how there are certain people he lets touch him, that he touches back; it's understandable, the way he avoids people touching him, but it's not everyone. And I start watching for that in particular. There are these few people he touches, and other people he touches when he needs to, but there are some people he never touches at all."

"You've really given this some thought," Johnny says past the tight feeling in his chest, smiling tightly and doing his best to make his voice wry, to be prepared to laugh this off.

"I have a diagram," Walt tells him solemnly, and his lips twitch, but his eyes are solemn and intent.

Johnny's smile is genuine this time. "Of course you do," he says.

"Some of the people this guy doesn't touch, it's deliberate. You can see it in his face when one of them is near, you can see how he's planning on how _not_ to touch them, or bracing himself for it, when he can't stop it." Walt looks down for a moment, and seems to realize he's still holding a paring knife in one hand. He turns and puts it carefully on the cutting board, and then turns back. "Some of them, though, I don't think he knows. I think," and now Walt frowns, his brows drawn together as though he's thinking deeply, trying to figure out how to express whatever it is that's in his head. Johnny's familiar with how that can sometimes be difficult. He feels a twinge that is one part pity, two parts admiration, and he's surprised to find himself restraining the urge to take the burden off of Walt's already laden shoulders, to circle the butcher block and circle Walt's bare wrist with his hand, to _see_ so that Walt doesn't have to explain. "I think he can feel some people without knowing he feels them."

"Who?" Johnny asks, genuinely curious now, and he folds his hands carefully around his Walt-free mug. He has a vague suspicion of where this is heading (and he's not at all thrilled to be headed there, frankly), but things have taken a turn in an unexpected direction, and he doesn't know what Walt means, exactly.

Walt steps forward and picks up his coffee, takes a drink, looks at Johnny. "Do you know Eric Parson? Lives over on Old Lake Road, right outside of town."

Johnny shakes his head, frowning as he tries to come up with a face for that name, but there's no connection. Though he is distantly grateful that Walt seems to have abandoned his use of the "guy" thing, at least for the moment.

"I've seen you near him a few times," Walt says thoughtfully. "A couple of times when you were with me at work, a couple of other times just out. Once I was driving by and you were walking up the sidewalk toward the market, and he was walking the other way. You didn't look at him, John, but you crossed the street before he got to you, and then you _crossed back_ , not ten yards down the road, and went in."

Johnny shakes his head; he has no memory of it, doesn't know who Eric Parson is, but he believes Walt.

"I arrested him last week," Walt says matter-of-factly. "It turns out he's a sexual predator. Girls on the Internet, mostly fourteen and fifteen year olds. He meets them online and he strikes up a conversation, and he eventually lures them somewhere to meet him. The thing that struck me about him when we had him in for questioning, John, the thing that kept nagging at me, was that he just didn't care. It wasn't even lack of remorse. It was like… they weren't real to him. He was a creepy sonofabitch."

"Okay," Johnny says, and nods, but his palms are sweating with the idea of it, with what it could mean.

"So I got to thinking about other people, it's almost always men, that I've seen you do that with. There've been a few." He looks at Johnny for a few long seconds, unrepentant. "I'm telling you this for a reason," he says.

"I never doubted it for a minute," Johnny agrees, and he hadn't, but now he feels itchy, hyper with the expectation of the other shoe dropping.

"I started thinking about it, and I started looking into these people, just… just because it _felt_ right. I arrested two more of them this week. John Jacobs and Danny Sikes." Walt watches him intently as he delivers the names, but Johnny doesn't know them. He shakes his head, and Walt nods acknowledgement. "Jacobs beats his wife and kids. I was in the right place at the right time, so I got to see it first hand. His oldest son is…" Walt pauses and swallows. "Well, he's never going to be normal again. Jacobs bashed him in the head with a hot skillet about a year ago. I don't know how it didn't get reported when they took him to the hospital." The grim look on Walt's face makes Johnny think he intends to find out. "I busted Sikes with GHB. We found a lab when we searched his house. It's going to be a lot of work to track down all of his victims."

Johnny says nothing; he doesn't know what to say, doesn't know what it means.

Walt turns around and for five minutes or so, he devotes his attention entirely to the omelets. Johnny doesn't have it in him to interrupt or to demand more information. His head is already spinning with information, and he can see Walt recovering his composure as he occupies himself with the menial task of breakfast preparation, can see his shoulders easing and his movements becoming swifter and more certain.

Johnny looks at Walt's coffee cup speculatively, his fingers twitching slightly. How much of what he sees is infused with the emotion of the person that had touched it previously? How much of it is influenced by the emotion of the moment, and how much is deeper than that? He's wondered that more than once. If he touches Walt's coffee cup now, would he see Walt with Sarah? Walt and his diagram? His fingers twitch, and he curls his hands around his own coffee cup carefully, deliberately. He's seen more of Walt than he wants to lately, and he doesn't want to take the risk. Or he does want to, part of him does anyway, and he isn't sure what that means.

Walt puts a plate in front of him and says, voice inflectionless, "Do you want to get your own fork?"

Johnny squashes down some sort of guilty knee-jerk reaction, and gets up and gets his own fork.

Johnny's appetite is all but gone. He picks at his omelet -- it's good, Walt's a good cook -- but Johnny doesn't want it now. His mind is circling this new information, the idea that he might… he's not sure, pick up some kind of signal? That he might sense, in some fashion, and without consciously knowing it, things about people. That he might be doing this every minute of every day without being aware of it. The idea makes him deeply uneasy. There is enough that he doesn't know, doesn't understand, about what he can do; adding another dimension to it, accepting the idea that there might be even more, and this time not something he can avoid by wearing gloves or by limiting the things he comes into contact with… it's unnerving and frustrating.

He's come to terms, mostly, with his hands, with his mind, with his dead zone. It seems… unfair to have the status quo changing on him now.

Walt eats with the single-minded enthusiasm of a man who is getting through one thing in order to get to another. He doesn't look up at Johnny while he does it, not even when he pauses to fill his coffee cup, filling Johnny's as well, carefully not touching it when he does so.

Johnny looks at Walt across his own butcher block in his own kitchen, and for a few moments he's overwhelmed by the weirdness of having breakfast with Sarah's husband, breakfast _Walt_ had prepared on Johnny's stove. Without quite realizing he is going to, he starts to chuckle.

Walt does look up at that, puzzled, which just makes Johnny chuckle more.

"You just made me breakfast," Johnny points out, and Walt gives him a 'yeah, and…?' look that becomes an immediate contributor to Johnny's general mirth. "It's like," Johnny manages, gesturing at his omelet unhelpfully with his fork, "like some kind of horribly awkward and twisted morning after," he finally gets out, and Walt's face goes still and surprised, and his eyes widen, and then he's laughing too, both of them _really_ laughing, and that helps some, helps a lot.

When their chuckles taper off they lapse into a silence that's a good deal more comfortable than what had preceded it. Walt pushes his plate aside, his omelet only half-eaten, and Johnny does the same (his omelet barely touched, and he has the momentarily ridiculous urge to assure Walt that it isn't his cooking).

"What's on your mind, Walt?" Johnny asks gently, and he thinks maybe the last forty-five minutes or so could have been easier if he'd just somehow managed to ask that question and _mean_ it when Walt had first arrived.

Being psychic, he reflects wryly, really ought to eliminate the need for hindsight entirely. At least then he'd be getting something out of this gig. The pay sucks and the bennies are laughable.

Walt glances up, his eyes a little wide, as though he's startled at the question, the offer. He opens his mouth, and for a second Johnny thinks he might actually do it, just spill whatever it is that's giving him that tensely uncertain look, but then he closes his mouth and looks down at his coffee instead.

Johnny doesn't push him. Walt is the guy that doesn't ask what he sees, even when Johnny sees that look that Walt has, the one that means Walt knows he's seen something. Johnny appreciates that. He figures a little patience is the least Johnny can offer in return.

Walt is just opening his mouth when the mic on his shoulder squawks out a demand for his attention. Walt closes his mouth and looks at Johnny -- Johnny gets the feeling Walt thinks he should have seen this coming -- and then turns his head, curling his arm up to the mic to key the button. "Go ahead," he says, and they both listen to the response.

It's nothing serious, a V.I.P. at the station, and Walt closes his eyes for a moment, and sighs with resignation. "I'll be right there," he says into the mic, and steps away from the counter without looking at Johnny.

"Walt," Johnny says, almost an objection, and Walt waves a hand at him impatiently.

"He's a city councilman," Walt says as if that closes the matter (which it probably does, in Walt's mind), and turns and walks into the entryway.

Johnny follows him. "I'm a psychic," Johnny points out, and Walt throws a smirk over his shoulder at Johnny.

"Maybe if you were a psychic city councilman," Walt offers, and Johnny grins back. He stops with his hand on the door and turns to face Johnny. "Come to dinner tonight," he says stiffly.

Johnny arches a brow at him, and part of him has some genuine reservations about that, but he knows he'll go. "You sure about that, Walt?" he asks, but he can feel that his lips are still curved up, and Walt smiles broadly for a moment, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"Yeah. I'll grill out." His tone is wry. "Bring beer instead of wine."

Johnny nods. "Yeah, okay," he agrees softly, and Walt opens the door and goes out.

Johnny watches him for a second, and still smiling, reaches out to push the door closed, and _"I want three around the back, move, go!" Walt orders, gesturing one-handed, his other hand full of eight pounds of dead metal, killing machine, his gun cocked up to his chest as he moves sideways, lean and tense, as deputies scatter to do as he says,_ and Johnny lets go of the door and is through it in the same moment, his brain still reeling with the vision, an imprint over the bright suburban street of the real world, with sunlight spanging off the chrome of Walt's squad car as Walt tugs open the driver's side door.

"Walt!" Johnny shouts, and Walt stops and turns back, and there must be something alarming in he way Johnny looks or sounds or is reeling down the front steps, because Walt sprints around the front of his squad and is no sooner in reach than Johnny seizes him by the arms, and Walt's mouth drops open, an "O" of surprise that might be funny in other circumstances, but there's nothing, Johnny sees nothing, and he shifts his hands to Walt's shoulders, his fingertips over Walt's badge, seeking, feeling.

"John?" Walt says thickly, and Johnny ignores him, seeking, and God, don't tell him he can't, not now, not when he sees so much he doesn't want to know, not when he needs to see.

"Come on, come on," he hisses furiously, aware of Walt gripping him by the elbows and shaking him a little, trying to get his attention, but discarding it as unimportant. Johnny steels himself and touches Walt's face (Walt goes still and shocked, his mouth soft and open), and there's nothing but the high whine of impending panic in the back of Johnny's mind, "dammit, come on," Johnny growls, begs, and he has both hands on Walt's face, circles down to his neck, nothing, up into his hair, and _"Clear," someone shouts, and there is an unsettling whine, a high-pitched electronic drone that isn't right, and too many people, all of them rushing around frantically, shouting over one another, something that doesn't belong, something almost like panic, and then a sound, chuh-chunk and that incessant whine, a long, dim sound, and Walt's shirt is on the floor, someone kicks it as they go by and it slaps against the wall, his badge thunks dully against the wall, and someone says, "I'm not getting anything," and someone else says, "Twice at point-blank range," and someone says, "Clear!"_ and Johnny reels backward, hands still groping for Walt who has shoved him back. "Walt," he objects, gasping, and Walt says nothing (his hair, Johnny sees, is mussed and sticking up in tufts), merely looks pointedly down the block at Mrs. Morales, who is watering her lawn and seems as yet unaware of them. He gives Johnny another look and walks a wide circle around Johnny headed back toward the house.

Johnny follows him, his heart still thudding along with dull panic in his chest, his hands itching and twitching and burning, but when the door closes behind them and Johnny reaches for him, Walt steps back.

"Wait," he says firmly, and Johnny glares at him but stills his disobediently twitching hands. "What did you see?"

"Just let me--" Johnny says, reaching, and Walt steps back again.

"Wait," Walt says again, patiently. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not in imminent danger. So tell me what you saw."

With Walt, Johnny doesn't have anything to prove. He doesn't have to be distinct, doesn't have to pull random things from dead memories, like macabre parlor tricks, because Walt already believes. So it comes out in a disorganized rush, Walt with his gun out and the doctors and nurses, Walt's shirt, the deputies scrambling to obey Walt's orders, the sound of the ECG, the dully monotonous tone that should be a series of beeps, and Walt listens impassively which somehow calms Johnny, too, so by the time he's finished they're both breathing normally, and Johnny no longer feels like he's about to jitter out of his skin.

"Okay," Walt says when Johnny falls silent. "Okay." He keys his mic, and says, "Base, I'm going to be delayed, advise the city councilman I can meet with him this afternoon."

"10-4, boss," the dispatcher's voice comes back, and Johnny's calm enough to smile a little at the way she says it, long-suffering even over the crackle and hiss of the radio.

Walt steps around Johnny and goes back into the kitchen, where his coffee is still sitting on the butcher block. He picks up his cup and swallows a mouthful, and then looks at Johnny, clearly waiting. Johnny sighs and joins him.

Johnny's familiar with Walt's careful interrogation of the psychic that always follows these things. It's oddly soothing, questions like, was it cold, what time of day was it, what did you see, were there buildings, people, sounds? Walt's questions help to give the visions some structure, and Johnny absently sips cooling coffee as he answers them, searching his memory, and the whole thing is less immediate and less terrifying, academic in the way things are when he and Walt are working a case, not less urgent, but less personal.

"Okay," Walt says eventually, and shoves his coffee cup to one side. He flicks his fingers at Johnny's cup, indicating he wants it out of the way, but not actually touching it, and Johnny moves it. "Okay," Walt says again, and extends his hand across the counter top, palm up. "Knock yourself out."

Walt's hand is warm and rough, a working-man's hand, and his fingers twitch when Johnny slides his fingertips across his palm. "Sorry," Johnny mutters, and Walt snorts. Johnny curls his fingers around Walt's hand, and Walt's curls back as though instinctively, so Johnny isn't touching Walt so much as they are gripping each other, _and the casket is made of some darkly burnished wood, and Sarah's hand is resting on Walt's, she is crying silently and he is pale but otherwise he looks almost painfully normal, life-like, as though he's sleeping, maybe he's been ill, has a case of the flu or something, but not dead, he looks too normal to be dead_ and Johnny jerks his hand away and curls it into a fist.

"What?" Walt asks, and Johnny shakes his head grimly, clamping his mouth shut. "John," Walt says, sounding calm and reasonable. "What? We don't know what might help…"

"Telling you what you look like at your funeral is not going to help," Johnny mutters, and Walt shuts up, and Johnny immediately wishes he hadn't said it. "I'm sorry," he says, and Walt shakes his head, waves it away, but Johnny thinks he looks a little pale. Nevertheless, Walt doesn't move his hand, leaves it where it is waiting on the butcher block, and Johnny sighs and reaches out again, _and his hand is curled around J.J.'s much smaller one, and past J.J. is Sarah gripping J.J.'s other hand, and she flashes a quick and nervous smile over J.J.'s head which he returns just as quickly and nervously, and he feels stupid, it's just the first day of school and it's not even his school, and it doesn't seem to be bothering J.J. that much, since he's grinning, his head swiveling from one side to the other to take everything in, his overlarge backpack making him look tiny in comparison._

Johnny pulls back carefully this time instead of jerking away, and it's times like these when he wonders if maybe, just maybe, the visions don't have any rhyme or reason at all. He has no idea where that came from, and he's uncomfortable with the knowledge that it had been one of those rarer ones, where he is not just an observer but a participant, that he had been Walt, and those are the worst ones with Walt, the ones in which Johnny can pretend it had been him all along.

Walt is watching him expectantly. "This isn't working," Johnny says, and circles around the butcher block so he's on the same side as Walt. He gives Johnny a narrow look, but doesn't object, and doesn't ask what Johnny had seen. "Just stand still," Johnny says, and Walt's lips quirk slightly, but he nods.

Johnny frowns and lifts his right hand toward Walt, hesitating, trying to find the spot, the way it feels in the middle of his brain, the shine. He skims his fingertips across Walt's uniform shirt, feeling them prickle but not flare, a button brings a flash of Sarah, there and gone in an instant, and it's just beneath his hand, he can feel it but there's something weird about it, so he passes it by, brushes his fingers against the cool metal of Walt's badge, _and J.J. is sitting on the edge of his bed, one hand curled around the badge, and there are tear tracks on his cheeks and his eyes are swollen and he wipes at his nose with the back of his hand when the door to his room creaks open and Johnny comes in, says "Hey," softly and J.J. looks up with such misery in his face that the Johnny's face crumples and he sinks to his knees in front of J.J., pulls him into his arms, rocking him the way you do very small children to whom you cannot explain things, and J.J.'s voice is muffled "Couldn't you, couldn't you…" and Johnny whispers, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,"_ and Walt has his hands on Johnny's shoulders and is shaking him lightly and saying his name.

"Hey," Walt says, and he sounds just like Johnny had in the vision, and Johnny's eyes prickle madly. "Hey," Walt says again, concerned now. Johnny pulls out of his hands and turns away, swallowing against the obstruction in his throat.

He has to figure this out. He has to figure this out.

He pushes emotion away and bends his mind toward the logic of it. Walt's hand gives him Sarah, Walt's badge gives him J.J., but his hands had been in Walt's hair outside -- he can feel his cheeks heating dully at the idea that his neighbors may now believe he is crippled, a freak, and gay for the Sheriff -- and there doesn't seem to be any real pattern to that, especially if you throw J.J.'s first day of school into the mix.

So try his hair again, he thinks, and he can't think of anything better to try and he's not giving up, so he turns back to Walt, who's watching him with dark, worried eyes. "Just trust me, okay," he says, and Walt nods, looking… looking surprised Johnny would even have to ask. Something relaxes in Johnny's chest and he almost doesn't feel weird about pushing a hand into Walt's hair, which is thick and soft _and matted with blood, and the E.R. nurse is trying to clean the blood away to see the extent of the damage but head wounds bleed so much, and more just keeps flowing, but it's definitely a gunshot wound, it definitely is, even though there had been no visible exit trauma, which is why they're doing this, and the defibrillator causes the body to heave and arch, and she pulls her hands back and sighs a little, it's too bad, he sure had been handsome, and says, "Doctor, look at this…"_

"Shot in the head," Johnny gasps out, and Walt steps back while Johnny struggles not to hyperventilate. "They couldn't tell right away because there was no exit wound, so it wasn't messy and obvious, so they were trying the defibrillators on you, and you…" Johnny casts about, knows there was more, and then he has it, yes, "you were shot twice at point blank range, but they didn't know about the head wound so it must have been, it was someplace else, someplace they thought they could save you."

He reaches for Walt again, fully prepared to frisk him, but Walt dodges out of his reach. "Wait just a minute," he says, and Johnny recognizes Walt's voice for hysterical people, so he forces himself to shove his twitching hands into his pockets and do as he's told. "A shot to the head with no exit wound probably indicates a low caliber weapon," he tells Johnny thoughtfully, "A twenty-two maybe. A gun like that wouldn't breach my vest." He fists one hand and knocks it against his chest, where it thunks like he's hitting metal.

"Yes, your vest," Johnny says, which won't save Walt from a shot to the head, but if he'd taken other shots some of them might have… Walt is already unbuttoning his shirt, and Johnny doesn't have the patience to wait for him to finish, so he fumbles to help Walt _get his shirt open, his hands clumsy and urgent, and Walt's laughing and trying to shove his hands away, "Just a minute, there's only a couple of real buttons, there's a zipper under there," and Walt catches his hands and holds them and Johnny looks up in time to see Walt leaning in, and he hears a moan as Walt's mouth slants across his, feels the burn of Walt's stubble and the press of his tongue_ , and Johnny lets his hands fall, breathing heavily, his face hot with mortification.

"What?" Walt says, his hands going still on the zipper of his uniform shirt (Yep, Johnny thinks distractedly, there's definitely a zipper under there.). "John?"

"Nothing," Johnny says (it must have been Sarah, he must have been Sarah), "hurry up," and flushes again at how that now sounds totally different in his mind.

Walt gives him a doubtful look, but unzips his shirt, revealing the dark blue expanse of his vest underneath. There's a sewn square in the front, and Johnny casts back, trying to dredge up what he knows about bulletproof vests, but Walt helpfully fills him in. "It's Kevlar, but the plate is metal. It's meant to stop knife attacks." He stands there for a few seconds, obviously waiting, while Johnny tries to still his hands and blank the last thirty seconds totally out of his mind. No sporting a hard on while feeling up your ex-girlfriend's husband. Absolutely not. Just no.

Walt, patient to a fault, just waits, and Johnny eventually takes a deep breath and steps forward. He can feel the flare in his fingertips before he even touches the fabric, and just before the vision takes him he realizes that he was feeling it through Walt's shirt, he could sense it there but he just couldn't reach it. You learn something new every day.

_Walt stumbles backward at the force of the impact, one hand going to his chest, and he doesn't quite fall, but rather sits down hard. "Shit!" he says, scrambling on his hands and knees until he's back behind his squad, and turns his face toward the mic on his shoulder, "We have shots fired, base, send me an ambulance, have them stage at Jefferson and Monterey until the scene is secured," and dispatch acknowledges him, and almost immediately sirens erupt into the night air, Walt's backup suddenly burning rubber at the knowledge that someone is shooting at him, and the house looks completely innocent, sitting there under the streetlamp, kid's toys strewn across the yard, but one of the front windows is broken out and the barrel of a long gun is resting on the sill, the vague shape of a person behind it, bent as though taking careful aim._

"It's a white house with a chain link fence," Johnny says, and he's calm now that he's seen, now that he knows. "I couldn't see the numbers or a street sign, but when you called for an ambulance you wanted them to stage at Jefferson and Monterey, so it has to be somewhere close to there."

"Within a couple of blocks," Walt agrees, head cocked, listening intently.

"I think it must have been some kind of regular call, Walt. You were alone and walking up to the gate in the fence, you didn't look afraid. There were two or three shots that hit your vest, and you fell on your ass and got back around your car. You radioed the dispatcher about the shots and requested an ambulance. I could hear more sirens coming, and the gunman was in the window to the left of the door, as you face the house. He had a long gun, maybe a hunting rifle. There are kid's toys in the yard," Johnny says, straining for anything else. "It's dark out," he finally adds, but that's it. That's all he's got.

"Okay," Walt says, and smiles. "I think that should do it."

Johnny nods. He thinks so, too. Forewarned is forearmed, isn't it? But. "Let me just," he says, and Walt says,

"Yeah, go ahead,"

and Johnny lifts his hand from Walt's vest -- where he hadn't even been aware that it still rested -- and brushes just his fingertips into Walt's hair, _and plunges both hands into Walt's hair, dragging his mouth down, and Walt groans and shifts, pressing down hard, pressing him into the floor, his mother's Persian carpet rough against his naked back, and Walt's erection grinds against his, and he arches up into the pressure and groans and Walt groans and curls a hand around his hip for leverage, to grind down,_ and Johnny backs away fighting off some kind of hysterical panic attack because that had not been Sarah moaning, that had been a distinctly masculine moan and Johnny's mother's Persian carpet, the one in the living room.

"You'll live," Johnny says hoarsely and backs away shakily, aware of Walt looking at him, too alert, too observant.

"Johnny?" he says, and reaches hesitantly out, and Johnny nearly trips he backs up so quickly. He doesn't stop until he's safe on the other side of the butcher block, and Walt is just looking at him, frowning and staring, and Johnny can't look back. "What?"

"Nothing," Johnny says tightly. "If you hurry, maybe you can catch the city councilman." He wants to bite his tongue at how Walt jerks upright, straightening with a little flinch. Johnny didn't mean it like that, but he can't think of anything to say to undo it-- he's frankly having a tough time thinking about anything but getting Walt out of his personal space, which as far as Johnny is concerned, included anyplace in or in the vicinity of, his house. "I need a shower," Johnny says, and Walt flinches again, this time his whole body sort of twitches backward, and Johnny's eyes flicker up in spite of himself, just in time to see Walt go blank. _Shit_ , he thinks, but he has no idea how 'I need a shower' might have caused that look on Walt's face, so he says nothing.

"Okay," Walt says, and Johnny reflects irritably that Walt says 'okay' too much. "Thanks for the… the warning. I'll see you."

Johnny doesn't walk him to the door this time and Walt doesn't repeat his dinner invitation.

When Walt is gone, Johnny stares at the dishes on the butcher block, pondering the wisdom of handling them, knowing already that he's going to.

He picks up Walt's half-eaten omelet, and _Walt is pulling away from the house, frowning, his brow drawn into ridges of deep thought, his movements certain and obvious as he reaches for the radio and keys up, winces at the whine of feedback from his portable and fumbles at it to turn it off, then keys up again and informs dispatch that he's on his way back to the station,_ transfers the plate to the sink. He gets nothing from either of the coffee cups Walt had touched, and he can't be sure through the indistinct roil of his thoughts whether he's relieved or disappointed.

He ghosts through the rest of the day, stops himself three times from walking barefoot across his mother's carpet (and in the end can't bring himself to walk on it at all, even in socks and shoes, because often he needs bare skin, but not always; some of the strong ones seep through things to get to him, and he doesn't want to know how strong this one is), and nearly sets fire to the house making grilled cheese for lunch.

He's so relieved when Bruce shows up after lunch that he freaks Bruce out a little, and ends up having to tell him about Walt and the shooting and the series of visions from that morning (with some minor details left out, obviously) before Bruce is reassured that Johnny is just a little jumpy from an unexpectedly busy morning.

Bruce observes Johnny going through his routine (outside again, among the roses) and talks the whole time, a reassuring background presence that lets Johnny focus on nothing more threatening than idle gossip about Bruce's patients and the strong stretch and pull of his own body, his muscles in better shape, maybe, than they'd ever been, though his hip and leg ache by the time he's done, as they always do.

He wonders if he should buy a new cane.

Bruce leaves just after three, and Johnny showers and dresses in jeans and a t-shirt.

At twenty to five, the phone rings and Johnny knows it's Sarah. He hesitates for the space of three heartbeats, and then sighs and picks up the receiver. "Hi, Sarah," he says, and she laughs.

"Hi," she returns brightly, the sound of her voice enough to make Johnny's skin prickle with memory, and this time memory that has nothing to do with her husband, much to Johnny's relief. "Walt asked me to call and remind you about the beer. He says you guys had coffee this morning."

Johnny blinks, and manages, "Yeah, he came by. Are you sure you guys want me over two nights in a row, Sarah?"

Walt is clearly a sneaky bastard. Johnny can't say no to Sarah, and Walt knows it.

He doesn't know what he expects, what he hopes for, but Sarah crows, "Yes! Are you kidding? Johnny… Johnny, I can't tell you how happy I am that you and Walt are… that you guys are friends. I want you to be close, I'm… I'm so happy."

Of course. Of course. Johnny turns his mind deliberately away from what she'd say if she knew how close Johnny saw them getting, and, "Okay," he says softly, defeated.

"Oh, and do you think you could pick up hamburger buns? I was looking through, and we could use another package."

"Sure, Sarah," he agrees.

He throws on a jacket and makes a run to the market for beer and buns. What else is he going to do?

He actually gets to Sarah and Walt's before Walt is home, and Sarah presses him into manual labor, namely getting the charcoal grill going so they don't have to wait for Walt to do it when he gets home. It's been a while since Johnny's stoked a grill, and a half an hour later he's standing there staring balefully at the thing (it's grinning at him, Johnny is sure), which is still unlit, though now stinks of starter fluid. Johnny considers squirting more starter fluid on the stubbornly not-hot coals, then decides that clearly isn't going to help. He frowns, scratches at his forehead, and puts the bottle of starter fluid on the picnic table.

He glances over his shoulder; nobody watching. J.J.'s doing his homework at the kitchen table. Sarah is at the counter, presumably still working on the potato salad.

Johnny stands in front of the grill and stretches out his hand, moving it just above the surface of the red dome, over the handle on one side, then the other, _and Walt has the grill turned carefully so the top blocks the wind, slowly and patiently lighting match after match, and setting them into a little pit in the charcoal, no overwhelming smell of starter fluid, just a whiff really, and Walt's shirt is lying on the end of the picnic table, he's wearing the world's dorkiest sun visor, and he grins in triumph when a small flame wavers to life in the little charcoal cavern he's made,_ and Johnny lets go and grins, waggling his eyebrows. "Gotcha," he murmurs, and snags the box of diamond tips off the picnic table with one hand while making a little charcoal cavern with the other. In less than a minute he has a flame, and two minutes after that he's got a fire that he eyeballs nervously until it burns the excess starter fluid off and dies down to softly glowing coals.

He turns to go into the house and tell Sarah of his success, and nearly runs into Walt. He's standing there, arms crossed over his chest, and he's giving Johnny that smug 'I saw what you did' look.

"What?" Johnny demands. Walt just shrugs and looks smug. Johnny's lips twitch, but he doesn't smile. "What?" he demands again, and Walt looks innocently back and holds up both hands. Johnny scowls, but a bright bubble of relief is growing in his belly. Maybe it's going to be okay. "I can't always be expected to use my powers for good," he mutters, and Walt snickers.

They walk up to the house in silence, and Walt goes to the counter for the platter of burgers and hotdogs Sarah has set out.

"You've got black stuff on your face," J.J. informs Johnny cheerfully, and Sarah turns to look and laughs.

"Charcoal," Walt adds helpfully and Johnny throws his best death-ray glare at Walt over one shoulder as he heads into the bathroom to wash his face.

He does indeed have black stuff on his face. It looks, in fact, as though Johnny has pushed his face into a mountain of charcoal and rubbed it around. Thanks, Walt. No, really.

He reaches for the tap _and Walt is shaving, the left half of his jaw still slathered in shaving cream, his mouth twitched ridiculously over to one side to smooth out his cheek for the razor._ Johnny grins at himself in the mirror, feeling decidedly better about the whole thing, and washes his face.

Walt and J.J. man the grill, which delegates Johnny to table-setting duties. Walt hasn't changed out of his uniform, Johnny notices, though he's in his white undershirt and trousers, his uniform shirt hanging over the back of a chair. His vest is sitting on the picnic table. He's got a glass of iced tea, though there is a case of good beer in the fridge. Ten minutes later, they've got seared hot dogs and rare burgers, and when they're settling down at the table and Sarah asks Johnny if he wants a beer, he glances at Walt's iced tea and asks if he can have a glass of tea instead.

They've both managed to kill a burger apiece (J.J. is down two hotdogs, and working on his third, while Sarah is still working on her first burger) when Walt's radio squawks. Walt looks at him and shoves his plate away. He shrugs on his vest while he's talking to the dispatcher, a domestic disturbance on Jefferson, everyone else is tied up at the scene of an accident, can he take it? Sarah gives J.J. a reassuring smile, and turns worried eyes on Johnny as soon as J.J. looks away. Walt tells the dispatcher that he's en route, and tells her to go ahead and get state troopers out to the accident, and send his guys on to the domestic as soon as the troopers arrive.

Outside the patio doors, the sun is just going down.

Walt zips up his shirt and crams the tails in his pants, and buckles his gun belt on with quick, practiced movements. Johnny stands up before he knows he's going to, and Sarah gives him a look, her eyes wide and frightened.

"It's okay," he tells her, and she catches his hand in hers, a demand. Walt's hand closes on her shoulder, and she looks up at him, then back to Johnny, then back to Walt. "It's okay, Sarah," he says. "It's going to be fine."

She nods, still looking uncertain, but willing to believe, wanting to believe. Walt bends and kisses her, and Johnny doesn't realize until he's following Walt out the door that she hadn't let go of his hand, during.

The house looks just like Johnny knows it will.

"This is it?" Walt asks as they cruise by without stopping.

"Yeah," Johnny says shakily, and Walt pulls around the corner and parks the squad.

"You wait here," Walt says.

"The hell you say," Johnny says, and gets out of the car.

"No," Walt says, calm and implacable. "I checked the place out today, drove by and got the address, got the name of the owner, looked around. I'm good, John, but not if I have to watch out for you. Wait here."

Johnny shakes his head. "Not happening," he says seriously, glaring at Walt. "No way."

Sirens erupt into the night air several minutes earlier than previously scheduled, and something hard and tight in Johnny's chest relaxes.

Walt, his eyes knowing, says, "I can't wait for them, someone could get hurt. Wait here, John."

"Things being different doesn't mean it can't be equally bad or worse," Johnny insists, but he knows better than that. He would have seen, and Walt wouldn't be Walt if he didn't have to go. Walt opens his mouth, and Johnny sighs and waves at him to go. "Just don't get killed," he hisses.

"I'll work on it," Walt says, and then he's running across the lawn of another house and disappearing behind it.

Back door, Johnny thinks, and stands where he is, staring in the direction Walt had disappeared in.

In the end, it's nothing at all. One of the kids answers the back door when Walt taps softly on it (after surveying the kitchen from a small window, and seeing only children inside), and Walt gets them all out with no muss and no fuss. Walt's backup arrives as Johnny is helping the last of the kids into Walt's squad, and the kids tell them their mom is upstairs, passed out, and their dad is downstairs, drunk and belligerent and armed.

Walt considers, and then gets on the radio, telling his dispatcher to have Bangor's tactical team on stand-by. Then he uses a bullhorn to tell Clinton Babcock that they're on their way (not strictly true), and that if he ends up firing on officers, he's going to do felony prison time (almost certainly true). Clinton comes out unarmed, and one of the deputies takes him in for misdemeanor family violence. Then they search his house and recover a handful of unlicensed handguns, as well as at least one stolen rifle. Also, he's wanted for assault in Portland.

It's all very quiet, and very calm, and nobody gets hurt.

Johnny feels like he's been hit by a bus.

They drop the kids at the station, where child protective services is waiting, and Walt tells the dispatcher he's 10-6, and not to even think of calling him for the rest of the night, to which she grins and replies, "You're the Sheriff."

As they walk to Walt's squad, he complains bitterly that that's no real answer at all. "If a tornado touches down in town square tonight, I'm definitely getting a call," he says.

Johnny grins and says, "You're the Sheriff."

Walt mimes shooting him over the top of the car. They're just pulling out of the parking lot when Walt says, "Your place or mine?" so casually that Johnny turns and stares at him for a full five seconds before he realizes Walt isn't hitting on him.

Of course Walt isn't hitting on him.

"I'm ready for bed, frankly," Johnny says, and winces internally. Walt, of course, just flips on his turn signal and starts in the direction of Johnny's house.

Walt doesn't come in, and Johnny can't help but be grateful for it, because whatever it is Walt had wanted to talk to him about earlier in the day -- still unresolved -- and no matter how freaked out Johnny had been, watching him dart across some random yard and around the back of a house belonging to a man that might have killed him, Johnny just can't take any more of Walt looking at him today.

He does it even as he's pulling up in front of Johnny's house, Johnny can see the gleam of the outside light on the porch outlining Walt's profile, so he knows Walt is looking at him, and Johnny's just not up for any more of it right now.

Bad enough he's having the equivalent of psychic wet-dreams starring Walt (only a couple, his mind defends anxiously, to which Johnny would roll his eyes if Walt weren't looking at him); he doesn't have the energy to take up where they'd left off talking this morning, or even to call Walt to task for the underhanded way he'd hauled Johnny over for dinner.

It's nothing psychic that makes him hold up a finger when Walt opens his mouth to speak; it's just knowing Walt. "No," Johnny says and he's glad it's fairly dark in Walt's car.

Walt's lips twitch into a smirk, and Johnny says firmly, "Goodnight, Walt," and gets out.

He doesn't go to bed, though.

He showers -- the fourth time today -- and wanders around in his track pants, not quite willing to touch anything. It is, he thinks, pretty ironic, really. Walt invites him over because Walt has noticed that Johnny is willing to touch people and things there, and Walt thinks Johnny should spend more time with people, but Walt has managed to invade the only place where Johnny never worries overly about what he touches, rendering him unable to bring himself to make a sandwich or a cup of coffee for fear of, well. Walt.

"Forewarned is forearmed," he says once he decides he's going to make tea instead of coffee (Walt having never, to his knowledge, touched Johnny's teapot). Besides, the future is fluid, changing every moment. It's possible that Johnny just having the visions of him and Walt (what exactly is that all about, anyhow? Johnny and Walt? The manliest man to ever man? Really, how likely is that to ever happen?) have made things different, changed the future, and he need never worry about finding himself unexpectedly lip-locked with the county Sheriff.

All he really needs to do to find out for sure is touch Walt again.

"Yeah," Johnny mutters into his teacup. "Maybe next week sometime."

Then he goes downstairs with his tea to brood about Armageddon, which is more likely than anything else Johnny can think of to kill off any and all thoughts of kissing anyone, let alone kissing Walt.

The thing is, he broods as he's going back upstairs a couple of hours later, the whole kissing Walt thing hadn't been… well, it hadn't been bad. Visions are not really a reliable way of gauging feelings, of course, due to the fact that Johnny isn't always himself during visions (though he's reasonably sure that he is in this case), isn't always involved (though he definitely had been in this case), or at least shouldn't be involved (definitely and unquestionably true in this case), and how the hell would he tell Sarah?

"Perish the thought," he says out loud, and wanders into his bedroom without noticing he's still holding his empty teacup. It's too far to take it back to the kitchen, so he sets it on the bedside table and falls into bed _and Walt is on him in a second, Walt's hands shoving briskly at his jeans, and he's helpfully lifting his hips so Walt can skim them down and off, and he thrashes when Walt's hand closes around his cock, literally thrashes and lets out a sound, a sharp cry, it's been so long, no one touches the fucking psychic, and Walt leans down and smothers the cry with his mouth, muffles it, warps it with his tongue until it becomes a groan, and he arches up into Walt's hand desperately, needfully, and Walt husks, "Shh, John," and he arches off the bed and spills into the rough heat of Walt's hand_ and falls off the bed and onto the floor, landing heavily on his bad hip and breathing like he's taken five flights of stairs at a hard run.

He shifts himself upright slowly, his leg throbbing with deep white pain, and looks warily at his bed. It's an absolute wreck, the covers a twisted knot, the bottom sheet pulled down on one corner, leaving the mattress exposed.

Johnny sighs and struggles to his feet. His track pants are hanging precariously low on his hips, and there's a large, incriminating wet spot in the front.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," he says, and heads for his fifth shower of the day.

He uses one of the guest rooms down the hall to sleep that night, one he knows hasn't been used in at least ten years, and aside from the brief flash of a woman in a primly full-length cotton nightgown with curlers in her hair, he sees nothing, thinks of nothing, as he falls asleep.

He sleeps neither deeply nor well, and he can't say he's surprised when what wakes him is a heavy, impatient pounding on the front door.

"Guess who," he mutters groggily, and pries himself out of bed, promptly bashing his shins against the edge of a trunk that he hadn't seen when he'd come in last night. He looks around for a second, and understands that he hadn't seen it because it's on the opposite side of the bed as the one he'd come in on. He'd automatically rolled out of bed as if it were his own, which considering the layout of the room, is the wrong side to get to the door sans barked shins.

Rather than navigate the sudden landmine of the strange room, he crawls across the bed and makes it to the door without further injury.

He stops in his room for a robe -- doubly important since he isn't wearing his track pants any longer -- and pauses just long enough to glare accusingly at his bed, which still looks as though it was last slept in by Linda Blair in her Exorcist phase.

He makes it to the entryway just in time for Walt -- of course it's Walt, it has to be Walt, because no one can pound as loudly or as authoritatively on a door as Walt can -- to start pounding again, and Johnny flings open the door (Walt's hand is still upraised in mid-pound) and says, " _What_? For the love of God, Walt, _what_?"

Walt blinks at him.

"Are you _dying_?" Johnny demands, hoping to help get the ball rolling. "Is someone _else_ dying?"

"Are you all right, John?" Walt asks mildly, glancing past John into the entryway, as though he might get a glimpse of some explanation for whatever is presumably wrong with Johnny.

"I'm fine," Johnny says, and sighs. "What do you want?"

"Just to talk," Walt says, still eyeballing Johnny warily, frowning slightly.

Johnny's so taken aback by Walt admitting that he wants to talk -- as opposed to invading Johnny's kitchen and spontaneously erupting into meaningful dialogue, meanwhile leaving little touches like booby-traps on every available surface -- that he just stares back.

"Can I come in?" Walt asks eventually, and when Johnny doesn't immediately invite him in, something flickers across his face. "Or if this is a bad time," he begins, and Johnny shakes his head quickly, feeling like shit, feeling like he feels around Stillson, and let's be honest, friends and neighbors: the fact is, if he ends up in bed with Walt Bannerman -- no matter how wildly unlikely that still seems -- that's nowhere near the kind of life shattering event that Stillson represents.

And on the bright side, it's still possible he's losing his mind. Which he shouldn't be holding against Walt in the slightest.

"Come in, Walt," he says. "I had a rough… uh, weird night."

Walt comes in and turns automatically toward the kitchen.

"No," Johnny says, "No. Just. No more kitchen. No more coffee. Living room."

Walt arches both brows. "Okay. But you look like you could use some coffee," he says, turning gamely toward the living room at the same moment that Johnny recalls his mother's Persian rug and steps in front of him, heading him off.

"On second thought, coffee would be good," he agrees, since it's not like Walt can really leave more of himself in Johnny's kitchen than is already scattered about the place.

So the kitchen it is, and Johnny is watching again as Walt makes coffee -- he now knows where everything is without having to search for it -- and he doesn't even object when Walt sugars his coffee and pushes it across the counter to him, though he can't deny his own relief when he wraps his hand around the mug and sees nothing at all.

Neither is he surprised to look up and see Walt watching him be relieved.

"Just," Johnny says, and rakes a hand through his hair, belatedly realizing that it's not at all unlikely that he's sitting here with the worst bedhead imaginable, while Walt is all neat and pressed and sharp in his uniform (not that he cares, of course), and sighs. With feeling. "Just spit it out, Walt," Johnny says. "Just, whatever it is, just, no more 'guy' and talking around corners, for God sake, don't you think I have enough to interpret in my life? Why should I have to interpret you too, and you're supposed to be the straight-forward one, the straight, uh, forward guy."

Walt gives him a bemused look. "I'm the straight-forward guy?" He doesn't look like he quite believes it.

"Yes, _you_ are the straightforward guy," Johnny assures him. "Purdy is the double-talker, and Stillson is the snake in the grass, and Bruce is the one that makes me do things I don't want to do for my own good, and Sarah is hard, and you are the straight-forward guy." As soon as he falls silent, he realizes how ridiculous that sounds, and feels his cheeks heat dully. "Okay, that was stupid, but humor me here. I'm really having a shitty week." He gives Walt a look. "Really."

"Okay," Walt says, and he still looks a little bemused, but he seems prepared to take this seriously. "Can I have a minute to think about how to be… straight-forward?"

"Sure," Johnny says, and waves a negligent hand at him. "Take a minute, take an hour. Take all the time you want. Or I could just…" He reaches hesitantly, and Walt jerks backward so quickly that he slops hot coffee over the back of his hand. "Oh, hey!" Johnny says, "Shit!" and Walt turns to the sink and holds his hand under the cold-water faucet for a few seconds. Johnny stands and circles around the butcher block, but Walt turns his back on Johnny and reaches for a towel.

"It's fine," Walt says coolly, and Johnny feels himself flinch and is glad Walt isn't looking. He retreats back around the butcher block feeling all of three inches tall. Walt spends another minute at the sink, running the towel under the faucet, and turns back with it pressed to the back of his hand.

"Walt," Johnny says.

"It's fine," Walt says again, dismissive. "It's not important."

Johnny thinks it is, but he doesn't argue with Walt. He can't very well object to Walt not wanting Johnny to touch him -- and why does that hurt? -- when Johnny goes out of his way not to touch Walt. "Okay," he says eventually, adding a little nod, and then he just waits, because he has no real idea of what to do or say.

"The whole psychic thing," Walt says, smiling a little. "I get the feeling it's overrated."

"You have no idea," Johnny says, feeling some of the tension retreat, because at least Walt's smiling at him now. He shakes his head. "I didn't mean to… intrude," he says, because he can't think of a better word for it.

Walt removes the towel from the back of his hand and looks at it for a moment, then shows it to Johnny. "It's fine," he says. "Barely pink." Then, after Johnny looks at it and nods, "You didn't intrude."

"I tried to," he points out.

"No, I mean, I don't have a problem with you touching me," Walt clarifies carefully, but he's not quite looking at Johnny when he says it.

Johnny is absolutely beyond mortified that Walt's words have an unexpected physical effect on him. He opens his mouth, closes it, shakes his head. Resolves to stay on the opposite side of the butcher block from Walt for the rest of his life. _It's the visions_ , he thinks, and it is, that's the God's honest truth, because Johnny is sure, he's beyond certain, that the idea never would have occurred to him without them.

But that doesn't make it any less real.

This is the worst day ever, he decides.

"I wanted to talk to you about that, actually," Walt says, and Johnny's head snaps up so fast that his neck twinges a little. He wonders if it's possible to give yourself whiplash. Walt is looking at his coffee, which is good, because Johnny is gaping at him. He closes his mouth deliberately. "Yesterday, what I told you--" He pauses, and flickers a glance up at Johnny, then visibly steels himself and doesn't look away. "I was trying to explain that I'm not just… this isn't just a feeling. I've been… watching you do the--" he extends a hand and twitches it a bit, and in spite of everything Johnny almost smiles, "-- the thing, and then just watching who you touch and who you don't, because…" he falters and looks uncertain, frowns like he isn't sure why he's been watching Johnny.

"Because you're a cop, and that's what you do," Johnny supplies helpfully, almost wryly, and Walt brightens and nods.

"Pretty much," he agrees. "And I think it means something, there's a pattern there. The people you don't touch, like the one's I've arrested in the last couple of weeks, I think you feel that they're…" and he struggles again, clearly groping for the right word.

"Evil," Johnny supplies, because Walt is a pragmatist, and though he might think that about someone, might feel it, it's not the kind of thing he would actually say. Johnny doesn't have that problem. Not any more.

Walt frowns and shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe just irredeemable."

"I could argue that they're one and the same," Johnny says, and Walt just shrugs again.

"You could," he agrees. "But do me a favor, and don't. I'm trying to be Mr. Straight-forward here." He smiles faintly when he says it, and Johnny holds up both hands in surrender. "Okay," Walt continues. "So, maybe it's the one thing and maybe it's the other, but either way, I think you know, even when you don't know." Walt looks at him, a question, and Johnny shrugs.

"How do I know?" he asks. "It could work that way, but it's nothing I have any awareness of, if it does. You're on your own with this theory, Walt."

"Right," Walt says dismissively. "Which is fine, because that's not what I wanted to talk about anyway." Johnny arches a brow at him, and Walt grimaces. "That's just helpful background information for you," he insists. "So you don't think I haven't been paying attention, or that I'm jumping to conclusions." He sounds, Johnny thinks, more than a little defensive.

"Okay," Johnny agrees.

Walt frowns at him, but says, "Okay, good. So there are people that you don't touch, and there people that you touch when you have to, usually people you're trying to help, or you're helping me help, and you don't touch them a lot, just, you know, enough. Enough to get what you need. But you don't go out of your way to avoid them, either, not consciously or unconsciously. You don't shake hands much, I admit, but you still go to the market and buy a case of beer and a bag of buns if you need them, even though twelve or twenty other people already touched your beer and buns, if you see what I mean."

Johnny can't help it. He grins. "I see," he agrees, and Walt regards him narrowly, but apparently decides not to mention the stupid grin.

"Good," Walt says. "And then there's this other, smaller group of people that you don't touch, and you know you don't touch them. Except… except when you do." Walt's voice goes soft and flat. "Greg Stillson, Reverend Purdy, and me." Walt pauses and takes a big gulp of coffee. Johnny has no idea what to say, but he's starting to see, starting to get why Walt has been so weird. "I know there's bad blood between you and Stillson and I know you… suspect him of something, or you know something, something you're not talking about." He raises both hands to forestall Johnny when he opens his mouth, and Johnny subsides. "I don't want to know anything you don't want to tell me about Stillson," he says softly. "I know there's something you think he's responsible for, or that he's going to be responsible for, and that's fine. I know that Gene Purdy was a close friend of your Mother's and I know there's something about him, too, something you suspect, some reason you don't trust him. And that's fine, too."

And then he just looks at Johnny for several long seconds, like he's at a loss, suddenly, now that he's got this far.

"Walt," Johnny says, even though he's not sure what to say -- though something starting with _"Don't group yourself in with those other two, that's not where you are in my head,"_ seems like a good idea -- and Walt doesn't give him a chance anyway.

"What I want to know," Walt says, and his voice is not quite steady -- Johnny knows he's staring at Walt, but he can't quite help it, he doesn't know what to think about Walt's unsteady voice or the clench of his jaw, like he's bracing himself, and would have bet a lot that he'd never see anything like it barring something happening to Sarah or J.J. -- "is what I end up doing that you can't stand to see."

"Walt," Johnny says, and then he has to swallow hard, and Walt's eyes are heavy on Johnny's face, searching and afraid, and Johnny shakes his head. Walt's eyes go flat and he turns away, turns his whole body, and it takes Johnny a few seconds to realize that Walt's leaving. "Walt, stop," he says, and Walt hesitates long enough for Johnny to close the few feet between them and curl his hand around Walt's elbow, drawing him carefully back into the kitchen, away from the door.

Walt lets him; he seems almost shell-shocked, pale and tight-lipped. "You change the future all the time," he says gruffly, and Johnny sees his throat working as he swallows a couple of times. "There must be a way to change whatever it is…"

"Walt," Johnny says. "It's not like that. That's not it at all." Walt gives him a look, bitter and still afraid, and not at all right on Walt's open, easygoing face. "Don't look at me like that, just. Just listen to me for a minute." How to explain, though, how to explain without damaging a friendship that's relatively fragile to begin with, a friendship Johnny wants to keep. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "It's not you, you're not like Stillson or Purdy, nothing like that. You don't, there's no thing you do, no…" He shakes his head, frowns, tries again. "It's not you," he hears himself repeat, and Walt turns and faces him fully, his eyes intense and searching.

"Yesterday when you stopped me, you saw something, saw me in danger, but you wouldn't have touched me if it had been anything else, John. " His eyes are dark and sharp and burning into Johnny's, and his voice is low and hoarse, a demand. "Would you?"

"No," Johnny admits, and even though he's seen it a couple of times now, he flinches when Walt flinches, and reaches out to do something, to comfort, but he can't complete the gesture, stops with his hand only halfway there.

Walt stares at Johnny's hand accusingly until Johnny pulls it back, and then shifts the accusation to Johnny's face. "Why?" he demands fiercely, and reaches out himself, pulling back before he even gets close to Johnny, but not until Johnny shies back first, instinct and habit, immediately ashamed, but unable to help it. "What do you see, John? What's so bad about touching me?"

"Nothing!" Johnny shouts, guilt and fury blooming darkly in his chest, "There's nothing bad about it, Walt," and he reaches out and gives Walt a shove, _and J.J. is wide-eyed and frantic with excitement, still small enough to be wearing pajamas with feet in them and in no way being lulled to sleep by his 'bed time' story, "What does Peter do, Daddy?" he shrills,_ just hard enough to send his back a step, not hard enough to hurt him, and snarls, "That right there, Walt, that was J.J. listening to you read out loud from Peter Pan when he was four, and--" Johnny curls a hand around Walt's wrist _and Sarah lays her head on his shoulder and sighs, and the movie is good but not as good as when he feels her go soft and relaxed against his side, she always falls asleep in movies, and he slides his arm around her and tugs her gently against his chest so she doesn't wake up with a crick in her neck_ "--this is Sarah falling asleep in your arms in a movie theater, and --" Johnny moves his hand from Walt's wrist to his cheek _and Sarah's eyes are full of tears, though she's jumping and shrieking just like all the other parents, just like he is, with her hand clasped tightly in his and his chest nearly bursting with pride and J.J. streaks toward them off the ice with his eyes blazing triumph and his cheeks pink with exertion and cold,_ he chokes out, "you and Sarah watching J.J. win his first hockey game and holding hands, and--" Walt catches Johnny's hands in both of his, _and Sarah arches up as he slides into her, her nails digging long lines down his back, and she makes a sound that makes his whole body clench, needy and high, almost a wail, and he slides a hand under her neck so he can angle her face up, can kiss her while he pushes in again, taste the sound she makes and feel her shudder against his chest and moan his name when she comes,_ "and S-Sarah saying your name when you're making love to h-her," and Johnny's voice breaks, and Walt drops his hands and jerks back like Johnny has burned him.

Johnny realizes he's on the floor, on his knees -- they both are -- and he shifts back away from Walt, hands curled protectively against his chest, and turns his face away. He can feel that his cheeks are wet, and his chest and his mind feel like a raw, weeping wounds. His breath is so loud and ragged in his ears that for a while he can't hear anything else. Once he can, the first thing he does hear is Walt's breathing, which sounds nearly as bad as his own.

 _Psychics behaving badly,_ Johnny thinks wildly, ridiculously, but his head is still spinning and he's not quite sure what one does in such a situation. He's never… never battered anyone with what he sees like that, he's never been so out of touch or so out of control, so he just sits still and listens to the sound of his breath slowly calm. It isn't any time at all before he starts feeling… well, "bad" isn't a word that comes even remotely close to accurately conveying how Johnny feels, but it's going to have to do because vocabulary has apparently gone the way of the Dodo, taking common sense, dignity, and compassion with it. He can't believe what he just did.

"I'm sorry," He says, and forces himself to look at Walt. Walt's face is stricken, pale and full of tangled emotion that Johnny would just as soon not sort. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said- I shouldn't have done that to you."

"It's okay, John," Walt says, hoarse but gentle, and apparently sincere. Johnny laughs in a way that makes Walt wince, and it doesn't exactly sound completely sane to Johnny's ears either.

"No it isn't," he insists. "Of course it isn't." Of course it isn't. Johnny's sitting on his kitchen floor in nothing but a robe, not-quite weeping, and Walt is looking at him as though he expects Johnny to start doing so at any moment, and it's definitely not okay. "You aren't the thief," Johnny says unsteadily, and after a momentary struggle –- during which Walt does not offer his help –- he manages to get to his feet. He rubs at his face with both hands, and his palms come away wet, but he feels better for wiping the tears off his face, so he rubs them on his robe and ignores them. "You're not the thief," he repeats, with as much reasonable dignity as he can muster. It's not much, but he's used to taking what he can get at this point. "I'm the thief, and I- I don't want to steal from you, Walt."

"You're not," Walt begins, but he sounds baffled and off-balance; it's very weird. Walt is not only Mr. Straightforward, he's Mr. Together, as well. Walt heaves himself upright with considerably more grace and speed than Johnny had managed, and makes a short helpless gesture with both hands, something that ends with his hands open, palms up. "You aren't- it's not like you mean to, John," Walt objects, but his voice still isn't completely steady, and he's definitely keeping his distance. Johnny's never felt more like a freak, like the carrier of some noxious and virulent plague.

Well there goes ending up in bed with Walt, he thinks with bitter humor, but he's perversely pissed off, too.

"Maybe," Johnny grates out, and he can hear the anger leaching out of his head and into his voice, but he can't stop it. "Maybe I don't, but maybe I _do_ , maybe there's more to it than random, undirected sight, and I won't-" He realizes his voice has escalated to a shout, and Walt is staring at him, and at some point Walt has ended up all the way across the room, his back very nearly pressed to the opposite wall. Johnny forces himself to put his hands down and take a deep breath, and not to say anything else until he thinks he can sound sane. "I won't be that," he says finally, quietly. "I don't want to be a guy who does that, who… who…" but he doesn't know how to finish the sentence, so he lets it die.

The right words in the right combination aren't easy to find to describe what Johnny can do on even the simplest level, and this is far beyond that.

Johnny drops his hands, exhausted and frustrated, and just shakes his head. "Just. Walt, just go back to work. This isn't… there isn't… Just. Show yourself out."

His mother, Johnny reflects as he retreats to his bedroom as quickly as he can, would be absolutely horrified at his manners, but he just can't. He can't even think of any of the convenient excuses that people come up with when they're unabashedly shitty to the people they care about.

There's no justification. He just can't.

He'd forgotten about his mangled bed, though, and he stops as soon as he sees it, feeling some kind of sound fighting to escape from his throat, maybe a laugh and maybe a sob. He clamps his teeth shut and refuses to release it, clenching his hands into fists at his sides because he's not sure he can resist the urge to touch it and see. He doesn't know why.

"Wow, what happened there?" Walt says, his voice tight but wry. It's not enough to defuse the tension, but Johnny feels a wave of gratitude that's almost pathetic in it's fierceness that Walt would try.

"You don't want to know, trust me," Johnny says, and turns around. Walt is standing in the doorway, too tense to look casual. Just seeing Walt standing almost in Johnny's bedroom is enough to cause another burbling, crazy laugh-sob to well up into Johnny's throat. He fights it off grimly; it takes a while.

Walt doesn't say anything for a while -- Johnny supposes Walt can tell when he needs to give someone time to get themselves under control. Just about the time Johnny starts to feel as though he might be able to manage at least a couple of rational sentences, Walt says, "You aren't doing anything wrong, John."

"Aren't I?" Johnny asks bitterly, and walks around the bed to get to his closet, because all things considered, if this conversation isn't over yet (and he really wishes it was), he'd prefer to have the rest of it fully clothed. He opens the door and ducks inside, tugging a pair of jeans off a hanger. He shakes them loose and steps into them, tugging them up under his robe even though he knows Walt hasn't moved from the doorway and can't see (and isn't likely to be interested in seeing, visions aside) the brief flash of Johnny's pale ass when he pulls them on. "You don't get it, Walt," he says tightly, shrugging out of his robe and tossing it across the foot of the bed. "It's not… I'm not…" he pauses, frustrated, and closes the closet door to look at Walt across the expanse of the bed. "I'm not talking about just your memories, it's not like," he gestures broadly with both hands, "looking in a window, looking in at something from the outside. I-"

Walt shakes his head and holds up a hand, taking a step into the room. "I don't care what it's like, it doesn't matter. You're not taking anything. They aren't gone, John, it's not like you're removing them." He gives a little shrug, an oddly self-conscious gesture, and shakes his head. "I… it's okay, if you want to…"

"Don't!" Johnny interrupts sharply, before Walt can actually say it; he isn't sure he'll be able to turn away if Walt actually says it. "You don't know what you're offering, and I don't know how not to take it if you do." It comes out low and taut, but otherwise calm, and Johnny's relieved because Walt wouldn't have taken him as seriously if he'd sounded frantic. High emotion isn't something Walt is all that comfortable with. Mr. Straightforward, Mr. Together, and Mr. Emotionally Repressed.

Johnny feels guilty for the thought, but guilty amusement, however fleeting, is better than… better than everything else so far this morning, actually. Johnny sighs. "I'm not a spectator when I touch you and see them. I'm not… watching, I'm… a part of them, I'm you, seeing them not just through your eyes but through your mind, I can f-feel what you felt. It's like you're thinking in my head, and I can't tell, there's no… barriers, it's so…" overwhelming, he wants to say, or intimate, or good, but Walt is starting to look alarmed again and Johnny's throat feels tight, he can taste the salty burn of tears on the back of his tongue, so he just shakes his head. "You don't want me… crouching in your mind like that, Walt," he says thickly. "And I don't want to… want that."

"Okay, John," Walt says soothingly. He comes a few more steps into the room, and then stops as though remembering where he is, who Johnny is, that he can't give Johnny a manly thump on the back or whatever it is Walt would do to offer comfort, and he just stands there, clearly at a loss. He frowns, his eyes dark and troubled. "Okay, but it feels… This is…"

"It doesn't matter," Johnny says, and turns away from Walt's face, from that look of miserable complicity. "Was it better when you thought you were going to do something I couldn't stand to see?" Johnny can't keep the bitterness out of his voice, and because he can't do anything about it, he turns and reaches for the chest of drawers to get a t-shirt, _and he can feel the cold, round knobs digging into his back and the hot, hard length of Walt digging into his hip, and his head falls back when Walt's teeth fix on his throat, he can feel Walt's hand cupping the back of his head, and he's shoving an armload of neatly folded t-shirts into the drawer one-handed because he's got several pair of newly-ironed jeans slung over the other arm,_ pulls one out blindly, leaving the drawer open while he tugs it on over his head to give himself a second, just a second to figure out what just happened.

"I don't know," Walt says somberly, his voice deeply unhappy. "Maybe. Maybe it was better."

Johnny nods, glancing over his shoulder. Walt returns his gaze steadily, but his face is tight and unhappy, his eyes shadowed. Johnny's chest is heavy with sympathy and guilt. He looks away, and deliberately pushes the drawer shut with his fingertips. Nothing. He presses his palm against the front of the drawer, but it's just smooth, slightly coolly lacquer. There's nothing there.

"Go on, Walt," Johnny says without turning around. "Go back to work."

"Come to dinner on Friday," Walt says quickly, almost running the words together in his rush to get them out. When Johnny doesn't immediately answer, he says, "Please, John. Come to dinner."

Johnny sighs, and shakes his head slightly, not quite a refusal, but... "Not this week," he hedges. "Maybe next Friday."

Walt frowns, but he doesn't argue. "I'll see you later," he says instead, weirdly emphatic, and Johnny just nods tiredly. Walt turns back just outside the door, still frowning fiercely, and Johnny resists the urge to retreat further, hide behind the closet door or something. "Don't—" Walt says, and then shrugs slightly. "Don't run away from us because of this, John. Don't… Sarah and J.J. won't understand, and I…"

Johnny shakes his head and makes a small, tight gesture of dismissal with one hand. "I won't," he says. "I can't," he adds after a long moment, which is perhaps a more truthful answer.

"Okay," Walt says, and gives him one last piercing look before disappearing down the hall.

Johnny stays where he is until he hears the front door open and close, and then he exhales deeply and walks over to his bed. He bends and uses both hands, but it's nothing but smooth linen under his hands.

He doesn't know how or why, can't begin to guess what he (or Walt) did or didn't do that changed things.

He eventually sinks down on the edge of the bed, feeling oddly blank.


End file.
